Lab Alumnae

Team Leaders

Marta Rivera Zurita

Lab Affiliation(s):
Memory & Language Group (http://memory.ugr.es/member/marta-rivera), Bilingualism, Mind, and Brain Lab.

Research Interests:
My research interests focus on the individual differences that underlie second and third initial grammar learning. Specifically, my PhD goal is to see how executive functions, language experience, age and brain activation differences act on different learning contexts. Besides, I am interested in other aspects of bilingualism such as language production and reading.

During my stay in the BMB lab, I will study how different L2 learning experiences (including Heritage Bilinguals) can affect the process of learning a new grammar using different learning contexts.

Andrea Takahesu Tabori

Lab Affiliation(s): Bilingualism, Mind, and Brain Lab

Research Interests: bilingual language processing; second language learning in adults; individual differences in early language experience; cognitive control

I am an advanced doctoral student in the Language Science Department advised by Dr. Judith Kroll. I am interested in how individual differences in cognitive skills and both formal and informal language knowledge affect new language learning. In my dissertation, I am investigating how immersion experience in an L2 may affect L3 learning in young adults. Mandarin-English bilinguals from China, who are studying abroad in the United States, are being asked to learn aspects of Spanish (L3) gender and phonology. I am considering how ambient exposure to Spanish and individual differences in cognitive control may shape their learning outcome.

Email: atakahes AT uci.edu

Anne Therese Frederiksen

Personal Website:  http://atfrederiksen.com/ 

Research Interests: Psycholinguistics; bilingualism; sign language; sentence processing; pronoun resolution; gesture

I am a postdoctoral fellow at the University of California, Irvine, working with Judith Kroll in the Bilingualism, Mind, and Brain Lab. I am currently funded by a National Science Foundation Fellowship. Previously, my work was supported by a Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Fellowship. I received my BA and MA in Linguistics from the University of Copenhagen, and I earned my Ph.D. in Linguistics and Cognitive Science at the University of California, San Diego, working with Rachel Mayberry.
My research examines reference and sentence processing in Deaf signers of American Sign Language as well as in bimodal bilingual hearing signers.

Luciana De Souza Brentano

Visiting Graduate Student

I am a Ph.D. student in Psycholinguistics in Brazil working with Professor Ingrid Finger at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul/ Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS). I also have a degree in Neurocognition and Learning and in Foreign Language Teaching. I work as a coordinator and a professor in Bilingual Education and Cognition graduate course in Brazil. I am an expert in bilingual education  and I provide pedagogical assistance in implementing bilingual curricula in schools in Brazil.

Lab affiliations: BMB- Bilingualism, Mind, and Brain lab, at University of California, Irvine- USA (director: Dr. Judy Kroll);LABICO- Bilingualism and Cognition Lab at Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul- Brazil (director: Dr. Ingrid Finger)

Research Interests: bilingual education, bilingualism and cognition, executive functions in childhood, phonological awareness in bilinguals, and biliteracy.

Looking for: RAs that are interested in learning and not familiar with research labs!

Contact Information:

Emails: brentanl@ad.uci.edu , lubrentano@gmail.com

Professional Instagram: @lubrentanoeducacaobilingue

Website: http://lucianabrentano.com.br/

Christian Navarro-Torres

Graduate Student

I am currently a Ph.D. student at the University of California, Irvine working with Judith Kroll. I received my M.S. in cognitive psychology at Penn State University, where I also worked with Paola Dussias. I use a combination of behavioral, eye-tracking, and electrophysiological (EEG) methods to examine cognitive control recruitment during language processing. A great deal of research has investigated how bilinguals’ two languages interact with one another, but we know less about the cognitive mechanisms that enable bilinguals to function in one language at any given moment. A major goal of my research program is to understand the conditions in which bilinguals dynamically engage domain-general cognitive resources to optimize processing and fluency when speaking or comprehending words/sentences in one of their languages. In recent work, I have focused on studying variation in language use and language processing to identify aspects of bilingual experience that may create novel ways for how cognitive control is utilized by the brain.

Lab Affiliation(s): ISÍ (I see) Eye-tracking Lab; Bilingualism, Mind, and Brain Lab

Research Interests: Psycholinguistics; cognitive science; bilingualism; individual differences; cognitive control; sentence processing; lexical access

Research Gate Profile:  https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Christian_Navarro-Torres

Curriculum Vitae

Contact Information:

2239 Social Science Plaza B
University of California, Irvine

Email: navarro.torresc AT gmail.com

Andrew Cheng

Postdoctoral Scholar

Andrew received a BA in Linguistics from Swarthmore College and a PhD in Linguistics from UC Berkeley. He is now a postdoctoral research specialist and lecturer at UC Irvine, working with the BMB Lab under Judy Kroll and the Meaning Lab under Gregory Scontras. His research focuses on the social, behavioral, and cognitive consequences of heritage bilingualism in Asian American populations.

Anne Beatty-Martinez

Visiting Graduate Student

I am a Ph.D. student in Spanish and Language Science working with Prof. Giuli Dussias at Penn State’s Center for Language Science. I am also a member of the steering committee for Bilingualism Matters at Penn State, an international organization whose mission is to interface current research on bilingualism and second language learning with society at large.

My research agenda involves the integration of linguistic, cognitive and neuroscientific approaches to examine how bilingual experience modulates language processing and cognitive control ability. In particular, I’m interested in examining how individuals’ production choices can predict comprehension difficulty by comparing production and comprehension performance of codeswitching and non-codeswitching bilinguals.

Lab affiliations: The Penn State Psycholinguistics Lab; Bilingual Sentence Processing and Code-switching Lab (director: Dr. Giuli Dussias); Bilingualism, Mind, and Brain (director: Dr. Judy Kroll); Language and Aging Lab / SLEIC (director: Dr. Michele Diaz)

Research Interests:  bilingualism, codeswitching, cognitive control, implicit learning

Contact Information:

Email: alb507@psu.edu
Website: https://sites.google.com/site/annebeattymartinez/

At UC-Riverside as Visiting Graduate Student:
3347 Olmsted Hall
University of California, Riverside

At Penn State as Graduate Student:
047 Burrowes Building
University Park, PA 16802

Haoyun Zhang

Graduate Student

I am currently a PhD student in Psychology at Penn State, co-advised by Professor Michele Diaz and Professor Judith Kroll. I got my master’s degree in Psychology in Beijing Normal University in 2014. My current research interests include language and cognition in different groups of people, especially in bilinguals and aged people. I’m currently working on a training project to see the effect of language switching training on cognitive control abilities.

Lab Affiliation(s): Language and Aging Lab; Bilingualism, Mind, and Brain Lab

Research Interests: Cognitive consequence of bilingualism; Age-related differences in language, bilingualism and aging.

Contact Information:

3 Moore Building
Penn State University
University Park, PA 16801

Email: hxz153@psu.edu

Kinsey Bice

Postdoctoral Scholar

Current Position:
Language Data Researcher
Alexa Intelligent Decisions
Amazon

Formerly:
Washington Research Foundation Innovation Postdoctoral Fellow in Neuroengineering
Department of Psychology & Institute for Learning and Brain Sciences
University of Washington

Ph.D. in Cognitive Psychology with dual-title in Language Sciences
Center for Language Science
Department of Psychology 
​Pennsylvania State University 

Website: https://www.kinseybice.com/

Research Assistants